SERIAL KILLERS UNCUT - The Complete Psycho Thriller (The Complete Epic)

by Blake Crouch

  “Come on, big boy! I’m right here! You can make it!”

  Donaldson staggered out of the woods holding a tire iron, and when the moon struck his eyes, they were already half-closed.

  He froze.

  He opened his mouth to say something, but fell over instead, dropping like an old, fat tree.

  Donaldson opened his eyes and lifted his head. Dawn and freezing cold. He lay in weeds at the edge of the woods, his head resting in a padded helmet. His wrists had been cuffed, hands purple from lack of blood flow, and his ankles were similarly bound. He was naked and glazed with dew, and as the world came into focus, he saw that one of those carabiners from Lucy’s guitar case had been clipped to his ankle cuffs. A climbing rope ran from that carabiner to another carabiner, which was clipped to a chain which was wrapped around the trailer hitch of his Honda.

  The driver-side door opened and Lucy got out, walked down through the weeds. She came over and sat on his chest, giving him a missing-toothed smile.

  “Morning, Donaldson. You of all people will appreciate what’s about to happen.”

  Donaldson yawned, then winked at her. “Aren’t you just the prettiest thing to wake up to?”

  Lucy batted her eyelashes.

  “Thank you. That’s sweet. Now, the helmet is so you don’t die too fast. Head injuries ruin the fun. We’ll go slow in the beginning. Barely walking speed. Then we’ll speed up a bit when we get you onto asphalt. The last ones screamed for five miles. They where skeletons when I finally pulled over. But you’re so heavy, I think you just might break that record.”

  “I have some bleach spray in the trunk,” Donaldson said. “You might want to spritz me with that first, make it hurt even more.”

  “I prefer lemon juice, but it’s no good until after the first half mile.”

  Donaldson laughed.

  “You think this is a joke?”

  He shook his head. “No. But when you have the opportunity to kill, you should kill. Not talk.”

  Donaldson sat up, quick for a man his size, and rammed his helmet into Lucy’s face. As she reeled back, he caught her shirt with his swollen hands and rolled on top of her, his bulk making her gasp.

  “The keys,” he ordered. “Undo my hands, right now.”

  Lucy tried to talk, but her lungs were crushed. Donaldson shifted and she gulped in some air.

  “In…the…guitar case…”

  “That’s a shame. That means you die right here. Personally, I think suffocation is the way to go. All that panic and struggle. Dragging some poor sap behind you? Where’s the fun in that? Hell, you can’t even see it without taking your eyes off the road, and that’s a dangerous way to drive, girl.”

  Lucy’s eyes bulged, her face turning scarlet.

  “Poc…ket.”

  “Take your time. I’ll wait.”

  Lucy managed to fish out the handcuff keys. Donaldson shifted again, giving her a fraction more room, and she unlocked a cuff from one of his wrists.

  He winced, his face getting mean.

  “Now let me tell you about the survival of the fittest, little lady. There’s a…”

  The chain suddenly jerked, tugging Donaldson across the ground. He clutched Lucy.

  “Where are the car keys, you stupid bitch?”

  “In the ignition…”

  “You didn’t set the parking brake! Give me the handcuff key!”

  The car crept forward, beginning to pick up speed as it rolled quietly down the road.

  The skin of Donaldson’s right leg tore against the ground, peeling off, and the girl pounded on him, fighting to get away.

  “The key!” he howled, losing his grip on her. He clawed at her waist, her hips, and snagged her foot.

  Lucy screamed when the cuff snicked tightly around her ankle.

  “No! No no no!” She tried to sit up, to work the key into the lock, but they hit a hole and it bounced from her grasp.

  They were dragged off the dirt and onto the road.

  Lucy felt the pavement eating through her trench coat, Donaldson in hysterics as it chewed through the fat of his ass, and the car still accelerating down the five-percent grade.

  At thirty miles per hour, the fibers of Lucy’s trench coat were sanded away, along with her camouflage panties, and just as she tugged a folding knife out of her pocket and began to hack at the flesh of her ankle, the rough county road began to grind through her coccyx.

  She dropped the knife and they screamed together for two of the longest miles of their wretched lives, until the road curved and the Honda didn’t, and the car and Lucy and Donaldson all punched together through a guardrail and took the fastest route down the mountain.

  -4-

  The Next Day, Location Unknown

  The TV droned on in the background.

  “…is Gregory Donaldson, age 56, who was in the news a week ago for assaulting a police officer in Wisconsin. He’s been linked to over fifty homicides going back thirty years, and found hidden in the upholstery of his vehicle was a large collection of Polaroid pictures, apparently showing him viciously murdering numerous victims. The woman chained to Donaldson, as of yet unidentified, is described as a person of interest by the FBI. They’ve just released a statement suggesting that fingerprint and DNA evidence could point to her being a serial killer. A task force has been formed to try and close the books on dozens of unsolved murders spanning nineteen states that this duo may have been responsible for.

  “This is the arresting officer in the recent Marshal Otis Taylor case, Chicago Homicide Lieutenant Jacqueline Daniels, who encountered Donaldson eight days ago at a Murray’s truck stop on Interstate 39 in Wisconsin during her confrontation with Taylor.”

  The scene on the television changed from the trench-coated reporter standing in front of the hospital to an attractive woman in a pantsuit being mobbed by reporters in a parking lot.

  “There are predators out there,” the cop said. “We’ve been lucky to nail three in a week. But there are others. Many others. Recreational killers are incredibly hard to catch, but even the smartest of them screw up eventually.”

  Hmm, Luther thought, turning his attention from the television set to the crying, bleeding man hanging from the ceiling.

  Jacqueline Daniels… I really should look her up.

  Killers

  Durango, Colorado, 2008

  Lucy

  WHERE am I?

  Think.

  Think.

  Think…

  Lucy opened her eyes to a blurry brightness.

  Couldn’t feel a thing but the weight of her eyelids.

  Her first conscious thought was that she’d been drugged, and if that was the case, this made only the third time she’d lowered her guard enough to let that happen. Normally, she didn’t party with guys she picked up. Sure, she’d sip a beer, pretend to take a toke off a joint—never inhaled—but for her, inebriation itself was worthless. She’d never understood what people saw in getting stoned and drunk. It only dulled the senses, and for her, intensity was everything.

  If they’d drugged her, then they’d probably raped her and beat the shit out of her, too.

  And she wouldn’t begrudge them if they had.

  Good for them.

  This wasn’t her first rodeo, and if someone had found a way to slip something into a drink or otherwise incapacitate her before she did the same to them…

  Then kudos.

  Hats off.

  But the hole in her memory was just so gaping she couldn’t quite bring herself to believe she’d let herself get drugged.

  No, something else had happened.

  Something much, much worse.

  Slowly, images were beginning to sharpen all around her.

  A black cube up in the corner near the ceiling that she realized was a television set.

  Empty chairs.

  The railing of a…bed…she was lying in a bed, and those things wrapped in red and brown stained bandages were her legs. In four places, black foa
m dressing had been taped to her appendages and drainage tubes arched out of them.

  An IV stand loomed above her, and several bags filled with clear liquid dangled from its hooks, running their contents down various intravenous lines into her left arm.

  A heart monitor behind the stand displayed her rate and rhythm.

  Her nose itched, and when she tried to raise her left arm to scratch it, something arrested the movement—her wrist was handcuffed to the railing.

  The door to her hospital room stood open, and sitting just outside was a pudgy lawman in a khaki uniform, reading Guns & Ammo. His gun—looked like a .40 mil subcompact Glock from her vantage point—bulged off his right hip next to a can of pepper spray and a sheathed baton.

  What the hell happened?

  Or perhaps more appropriate…What the hell did I do?

  She wasn’t in any discomfort. The only pain of note was a steady, subtle burn in her urethra, which, to be honest, felt just a little bit nice. The kind of thing she could get off on under the right circumstances.

  Then again, she’d always had a soft spot for catheters.

  She wiggled her bottom, and a burning flush crept up her tailbone.

  Lucy glanced down at her right hand.

  Thank God.

  A morphine pump.

  She squeezed the button.

  The push was immediate.

  Numbness shooting down into her veins, filling her head to toe.

  Floating.

  Both weightless and sinking at the same time…the mattress and pillows slowly swallowing her.

  She felt relaxed and faintly itchy, and three words crossed her mind before she lost consciousness again.

  Sweetest. Death. Ever.

  The next time she regained consciousness, a doctor was standing bedside, studying a chart.

  He was broad-shouldered and handsome in a boxy, unoriginal sort of way she’d never been attracted to.

  Lots of right angles.

  Bland good looks.

  Quarterback handsome.

  When he saw that she was awake, he lowered the chart and said, “Kurt Lanz, M.D. How you feeling?”

  She had to swallow before she could answer.

  “My peehole really hurts.”

  “Want me to take a look?”

  “Would you mind?”

  Dr. Lanz lifted her hospital gown, and though that prevented Lucy from seeing what he was doing, she felt a slight tug around her urethra. He seemed to fiddle with it longer than needed.

  The perv.

  “Might be a bacterial infection from the catheter,” he said. “I’ll have a nurse replace it.”

  “Thank you. Where am I?”

  He dropped her gown. “Blessed Crucifixion Hospital in Durango, Colorado. You were airlifted here two nights ago.”

  “What happened to me?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “You don’t remember?”

  She shook her head.

  Dr. Lanz glanced over his shoulder at the deputy outside the door.

  “I think the Feds want to be the first to actually talk with you about the accident, but I can go over your injuries.”

  Feds?

  “Frankly, you’re lucky to be alive. You suffered a hairline fracture to the skull. Broken nose. You lost your two upper, front incisors. Sustained severe lacerations and abrasions to your back and legs.”

  “How severe?”

  “When you were dragged, the pavement essentially peeled away your skin over approximately eighteen percent of your body. You’ve already been through two surgeries that saved your legs, but you’re going to need extensive debridement and skins grafts. Right now, we have you on a regiment of negative pressure wound therapy. We can talk more about this tomorrow. I don’t want to overwhelm you.”

  Lucy swallowed. I bet I look so pretty.

  “Any broken bones, Doc?”

  “Your coccyx took a savage beating.”

  “My coccyx?”

  “Your tailbone. It was—I don’t know exactly how to put this—ground down as you were dragged across the pavement.”

  Lucy smiled. “You’re telling me I lost my ass?”

  Lanz flashed a high-beam, soap-opera-star smile.

  “About fifteen percent of it. But considering the car dragged you through a guardrail and down the side of a mountain, I can’t quite wrap my head around how you survived. You’re a lucky young woman.”

  Lucy squeezed out a single tear that slid down her left cheek. She forced a sniffle. “I don’t feel so lucky right now.”

  Lanz reached forward and touched her cuffed hand, running a finger across her thumb.

  “You’re going to be okay.”

  “How does my face look?”

  She registered the arousal in his eyes, his pupils dilating—a small tell, but one she’d learned to read. If a guy was trying to fuck you, that lowered a lot of defenses.

  “You’re still stunningly beautiful,” Lanz said. “Just don’t smile until we find you some new teeth.”

  Lucy smiled with her lips together, made herself blush.

  “Thanks, Doc.”

  “Honey, what’s your name? You didn’t have any identification on you.”

  “Lucy,” she said.

  “Lucy what?”

  “Just…Lucy.”

  “You’re not wanting to tell me, or you don’t remember, or—”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Hmm. Could be some retrograde amnesia. It’ll probably clear up. You didn’t sustain a traumatic brain injury. Is there any family I should call? Just to let them know you’re here?”

  She shook her head. “No one who’d care.”

  “Oh, I don’t see how that could possibly be true.” He winked at her and wiped the tear off her face. “There’s a man outside waiting to speak with you. You feel up to that?”

  “Sure.”

  “The media has taken an interest in you being here.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, but I want you to know that aside from your physical needs, your privacy in this hospital is our utmost concern. We won’t let anyone from the press bother you.”

  “Thanks, Doc.”

  “I’ll be back to check on you within the hour. You need anything in the meantime, just buzz Nurse Winslow.”

  Lucy watched Lanz turn away and head back through the door into the corridor.

  The morphine must have been waning because she noted a subtle sting beginning to encompass her entire body. She activated the pump again and the drug hit her bloodstream just as a black-suited man strolled into her hospital room, closing the door after him.

  He dragged a chair over from underneath the television set and unbuttoned his black jacket as he eased down into the chair.

  Lucy studied him through the opiate fog.

  He was lanky with short, dark hair.

  A perfect shave.

  Underneath that suit, she would’ve bet he owned a pair of thin, muscular arms. Wiry strength. Scrappy. A fighter when it came down to it. God, she would’ve loved to have encountered him in a hotel bar. She’d have marked him as a lawman right away—he had superficially cold eyes from his training. From the Academy and possibly a few years in state law enforcement. Maybe law school. From toting that big badge around and all the bullshit respect he’d convinced himself he deserved. But there wasn’t real ice underneath. Just a thin, crusty layer that she could’ve shattered in about thirty seconds.

  In her entire life, she’d only seen real ice, deep ice, in a handful of people.

  “Special Agent Raymond Nash,” he said, flipping open a black, leather wallet and flashing his credentials.

  “Hi, Special Agent Nash.”

  “Are you cogent enough to speak with me?”

  “I think so.”

  “Do you know why I’m here?”

  Lucy smiled. “I don’t even know why I’m here.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I don’t know why I’m here. Like how I got here, I me
an.”